141 of 159 people (89%) found this review helpful21 people found this review funny

Not Recommended

1,487.7 hrs on record

Posted: July 22, 2016

Early Access Review

It's finally time to redo this review. After over three years of having this game positively reviewed, I just can't justify it anymore.

You know those girls that are with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ guys that cheat on them all the time and don't have a job and are basically just terrible people, but the girl talks about how she loves him and she can change him and all her friends tell her she can do better but she just won't listen to them? You know what I'm talking about? Well, I've been in a three year relationship with SolForge and it's been terrible. I kept hoping it would get better. They kept telling me they were going to be better and they were going to fix everything wrong with our relationship. Even now, I'm going back through Kickstarter updates. "Animated Card Preview!" dated February 17th, 2013. "Next Game button!" dated October 1st, 2013. "The future of SolForge including full release this fall" dated May 2015. So many promises, so many hopes. I just kept waiting for it to get better. I wanted to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And I waited... and I waited.

Well, it came. A few weeks ago, we made it to the end of the rainbow. The new client which was supposed to be developed in a few months and ended up taking over a year dropped. But it wasn't a pot of gold. It was a steaming pot full of festering crap. So poor was the new client release that they basically had to do an "Oops, can't put the rabbit back in the hat, so this week just won't count while we work out our server issues that we 'couldn't have anticipated.'" Turned out to be a couple weeks, but they worked out their server issues and the game is now actually playable.

So what did we get with the new client? Well, I mean I guess it works. A lot of functionality that was in the old client is now gone, such as the next game button, deck sorting when deck building or drafting, the game log now clears if you exit to menu and come back, you can't click on Solbind cards in the card text to see what he solbound card actually does... I mean, I guess the menus look pretty. But the rest is terrible. Like... really terrible. We got a new client that is slightly prettier, but is worse in basically every other way to the old client. Nice.

But let's say that's all fine. Annoying, but fine. What is the actual gameplay like? Well, it too has gotten worse. Much worse. Now, to be perfectly honest, I've had a problem with certain RNG aspects of this game since the very beginning. I mean, it's a CCG so obviously RNG is going to factor into every game, but my problem is that this game frequently hands the game to one player or the other based completely on RNG. Again, I understand that happens sometimes in CCGs, but it seems far too frequent when I look back at a game and realize that there is absolutely nothing I could have done to pull out a win because my opponent drew all his leveled cards and I drew none of mine. Now I said things have gotten worse and everything I've just talked about have been a part of the game since day 1, so what exactly has gotten worse about RNG? Well... it's how many cards are "I win" or "I lose" based purely on RNG. In alpha, there was Everflame Phoenix. It was a very polarizing card due to the pure RNG aspect of it but even then, it wasn't a straight out "I win." Now, there is Othra which features the exact same infuriating mechanic and really, the exact same card design (huge level 1, useless level 2 that can flip on 2.4 into a game-winning level 3) which is like Everflame Phoenix only significantly more powerful. It's the power-creep version of the same card.

The thing is, they keep making more and more cards that are incredibly good based on RNG. In the newest set, Indomitable Fiend is an amazing RNG card. The whole concept of the card is that you can't really direct what lane it ends up in, but it's so powerful you don't really care. In fact, I'm playing an Indomitable Fiend deck right now because it's so powerful, but the thing is I don't really have to play it. The deck plays itself. If I draw Indomitable Fiend into multiple Immortal Echoes, I win. Otherwise, I lose. The actual decision making in the deck is barely a decision most of the time. And the reason I'm playing this braindead deck is that it's actually one of the most powerful decks playable, which I think really gets to the underlying problem with this whole game. For several iterations and several expansions, SolForge is slowly stepping away from decision making and interactivity and more toward purely RNG based games from start to finish. Players have talked about this and written articles about it for a long time, but it doesn't seem like it's by mistake at this point.

And finally there's the power creep. Now you could argue that cards are constantly being rebalanced, new cards are being tuned down and old cards are being tuned up, but the thing is... every new expansion has at least one or two cards that are clearly overpowered. Every time. Sure, after a month or two they tune them down, but I don't think it's a mistake that they come out of the gate overpowered. It encourages players to spend money to buy cards in the new set if they want to be competitive until the obviously overpowered cards are finally tuned down. Coincidentally, it's usually shortly after their forging costs have been reduced.

So after my three year abusive relationship... SolForge... I'm breaking up with you. I'm tired. I'm tired of your crap. I'm tired of your broken promises, broken clients, and broken game. I'm tired of being frustrated about losing games that I never had any chance of winning. I'm tired of winning games that I never actually had to make a decision from start to finish. I'm tired of "alternate art" cards that are just recolored versions of the old cards. I'm tired of a mobile client that hasn't worked in over a year despite it working initially. I'm tired of seeing cards that are stupidly overpowered every single expansion when you can't not realize how overpowered those cards are. I'm over it. I trusted you, I backed you, and you failed me.

77 of 91 people (85%) found this review helpful2 people found this review funny

Not Recommended

1,068.9 hrs on record

Posted: July 25, 2016

Do not play this game. The devs completely ruined it with a new client undated. As you can see I have many hours of play under the hood and I can assure you its now a big pile of crap. In order to make the new client possible the devs had to remove more then 60% of the game feature. They are really amateurish and unprofessional they can't even change screen shots on the store page that are misleading. The true release was the 6/3/2016 but it took 2 months for the devs to remove the EA tag....

SolForge beta had grown to become one of the games I most enjoyed. And I'd been eagerly awaiting the full release for a while.

What did I expect?* Some bugs removed.* A way to manually sort decks. It used to auto-sort A-Z, so you had to number your decks to sort any other way.* Better card search options. Especially across levels. That is, you were only able to search for the wordings on the level 1 versions of cards. This meant you couldn't search for, for example, the cards that are 'free' at level 2 or 3, because those cards have no text at level 1.* Larger 'at a glance' cards or an option for at a glance text overlays, so you could easily read what several cards do, side by side.

What did I hope for but not really expect?* Extra stats for cards. Especially stats for which decks they're used in. I love having multiple decks (essential for solo play), with as much variety as possible across decks. Ideally, I like each deck to have entirely different cards from each other deck. This is almost impossible if you have 10 or more decks, because there's no way to remember which of the hundreds of cards you've already used in another deck.* More solo options. At the very least, developer designed decks to play against (some of which could be based on previous community decks or tournament winning decks).* Better AI.

What did we actually get?NONE of either my hopes or expectations. In fact, quite the opposite in most cases:* Loss of even the automatic A-Z sorting. So now my decks are just a random jumble.* Loss of the ability to even VIEW the level 2 or higher versions of cards at a glance. So now you can't even skim across the cards to try to spot which are, for example, 'free'. You have to click on each, one by one... yeah, through hundreds of cards.* Not that that point matters now, because in addition to that, the text has been removed from the cards entirely. The only way to see the text is to click on them and have a pop-up tell you what it says. So there is now no way to compare cards at a glance.* AND the cards are actually SMALLER! Most of the screen space has been given over to the background/playmat, with the cards as tiny, shrunken little things in a small section in the middle!* The random deck options and 'quick play' option for solo battles have both been removed. Now the only solo option is to choose two of your own decks, one to play with and one to play against. Not nearly as fun as randomised choices.

On top of all that:* MORE bugs, not less.* Slow loading times.* Slow in other ways too (eg. it goes through a series of mini-freezes when opening new packs)* Multiple other problems just for iPad versions, that aren't a problem on PC (eg. right-click options; and scrolling that doesn't work).

So... what was it all for then?* Shiny silver background.* New card format. Shiny, sci-fi style. Bright lines around the edges. (All negatives for me: The sci-fi style doesn't suit the more fantasy oriented setting. The bright lines distract from the art.)* Over the top special effects, like packs blowing up instead of opening; and the whole deck flying around the screen when it's time to level up.

In sum, the only 'improvements' are all flash and no substance; the game is now frustrating on PC, almost unplayable on iPad, and certainly unplayable on anything smaller than a standard sized iPad. Major disappointment, for a game with so much promise.

Solforge was an amazing game. The mechanics remain awesome, but all the features that made it worth playing instead of something else are gone. 1650 hours on record, and if the UI stays this way, that number will not be going up. I played it because it was both mechanically awesome AND streamlined, easy, and fun to play. I could previously play multiple matches at once, while having a match against a friend in another country going for a whole week. The UI used to help you pay attention to all of the important parts of the, now it's flashy and slow.

Mechanics: 8/10

The mechanics in this game remain awesome. Cards that level within each match, cards that scale with your rank as it increases within each match, single-use cards, as well as the usual gamut of keywords.

Playability: 2/10

Recent game patch (Summer 2016) resulted in a massively reduced playability in the game.

Features lostAbility to play untimed games (such as with friends, over hours or days)Ability to view library as a text-based list of cards (must use picture-based now)"Next Game" button (while not directly restricting you from playing multiple matches, this change made it

Quality of Life DowngradesMassively slow changes from match list to match to deck builder to store. This game used to have the quickest, most streamlined UI. Now there's loading animations for everything. The amount of space the cards take up in a match on your screen was reduced. The formerly prominent art is now much smaller and less striking.

35 of 43 people (81%) found this review helpful1 person found this review funny

Not Recommended

569.1 hrs on record

Posted: July 27, 2016

I enjoyed this before the update. Prices went up on packs, silver became almost useless, no daily logins, can't random vs AI, animations take as long as Inifity Wars and the cards themselves arn't even animated.

48 of 65 people (74%) found this review helpful5 people found this review funny

Recommended

389.1 hrs on record

Posted: January 18, 2015

Early Access Review

Coming from a long time MTG Player and Hearthstone player I really enjoy this game. I got turned on to it because I found out a long time MTG pro named Brian Kibler was one of the driving forces of this game.

This game seems to be one of the best games to limit the amount of randomness that can happen in games that have a resource system. You get to play 2 cards a turn (as long as they have targets when applicable), discard your hand at end of turn and draw 5 again. Whenever you play a card a leveled up version goes into your discard pile which gets reshuffled into your deck every 4 turns. So there's a neat strategy in which cards you play and when. Most cards have 3 different levels (with some having 4 and some that are just 1 but that get buffed based on what turn it is). All combat takes place in lanes (5 of them) which creates some interesting strategy.

You can buy packs and gold in the game but you don't have to. You only need to win 3 games a day to get all the special bonuses (which include packs/cards and silver) and you also get tickets for tournaments. My favorite game mode is there version of draft. You start off with 6 cards that are figured out based on a logarithm of which cards get picked higher. No waiting on other players to choose their cards as yours are all generated just for you. It's a nice approximation of a traditional magic drafting but without having to get 8 players gathered and without waiting for others to choose their cards,

I'll go further into detail as to why I don't support the game anymore. The company behind it is rather high on themselves because they had a few big names behind their game, and so they charge outrageous prices for things, and have little value for customers because the entire game was kickstarted, meaning all of the money they make afterwards is more or less entirely profit due to the low maintenance cost of digital card games, and most of it being data being pulled from a database. They don't do any form of maintenance between large updates. Most games have a weekly downtime for a few hours to fix bugs, and add improvements to interfaces, or make the game flow more smoothly, not this. They only update when they have content that they can monetize, such as a new handful of cards, which leaves existing bugs present in the game for months. They have a difficult time managing the iPad version with the PC version, and both appear to be neglected at times because of it, though personally I can not speak for the mobile (phone) version. They had closed beta last for the better part of 8 months, the first six of which involved literally nothing for the player, you had the same demo decks for six months. It was technically longer than that, since it came out shortly before Christmas, but i'll round down because I don't have the exact dates, and frankly don't care enough to get them. Then, in the summer following the closed beta, they come out with their first set of cards, and go into open beta, but they give a brief window of just a few days for any of the closed beta participants and kickstarter backers to spend their store credit after having nothing to do with it for the past six months, and post it in an obscure section of their forums to even announce that it was happening. Nothing on steam, nothing in the client, nothing in the announcement section of their forums, and nothing on their homepage of their website. They did announce it on twitter once or twice, though. So if they happened to be the only people you follow, you may have seen it after having no reason to look at their page for six months. Personally, I chose to read that as trying to squeeze what value they could out of even the players who backed them before the game was even a demo, but read what you will into it.

Gameplay: If you have ever played Magic: The Gathering before, this game is incredibly simple to pick up. The mechanics in the game are outrageously simple; and many of them actually exist in Magic under other names. That being said, imagine one of the game rules in Magic being changed so that a Wheel of Fortune was cast every turn. All of the multiple-turn decision trees, and all of the long-term strategy would be removed; and that is exactly what SolForge did. You get a new hand every turn, and with no resource system, you are instead limited to how many cards per turn you can play (two, aside from a few cards enabling other cards to be free here and there, but two is the default by game rules). So you have a hand of five cards, and can play two of them, every turn, forever. With a new hand every turn. Which basically equates to you have five cards to choose from, but the game state usually dictates which of them are the best to play (if you're behind on board, or if your opponent has a creature you have to kill or you lose, that sort of thing) which leads to very few decisions actually being made by the player. Early game, of course, you have the options of what cards to play in order to level them, sure. But you have a relatively high chance of never seeing the leveled version when it matters again, which happens far more frequently than you'd think.

What the mechanics equate to, at this point is: Level your important cards, and level answers to your opponent's important cards. If you draw your answers to your opponent's cards, while they don't draw answer's to your cards, you win. The opposite is true, as well of course, but it creates for very little interesting gameplay, without ever having any complex board states, or very many things you can due since you can (almost) always only play two cards per turn.

All of that being said, I didn't mention their failure to balance anything outside of a large update, and even then, there is rather little of it going on. They don't do any balance changes until they have their large updates (which has averaged once every four months or so, thus far). Which means if something is overpowered, it is overpowered for a while. And if something is garbage and unplayable, it is that way for a while. The game is stagnant, and in a bad place, and it won't get better for a very, very long time, if at all. They couldn't even balance for draft, as everyone who has drafted more than twice can tell you exactly what the best factions are in order, and what cards among them matter. And once you know what cards you have to draft to win, it boils down to who draws what cards, and when they draw them. There is no concept of: "First turn, i'll play Dude A, and then the next turn i'll play Dude B that goes really well with Dude A" because you have a high chance of not even drawing Dude B, and in the next combat phase, Dude A is dead.

And then you have the lazy game design. All sorts of RNG where it really isn't needed. Not just in the Wheel of Fortune every turn. Not just in whether or not you drew a leveled version of a card. It is a huge factor in draft, as you aren't guaranteed any cards of any specific rarity, and once you choose two factions, you have no say in what you get beyond that. It gets even worse; though, because they have it literally invade their cards. There are currently 10 cards that have built-in randomized effects (random amount of damage, random movement, etc); which to me, is just lazy design. And that's not counting cards that only have things happen at certain times (upon leveling, for example) which is - in a way - pseudo RNG in the sense of it's much stronger on certain turns than others (An example of this would be one card that if you draw it the turn before you level, you can play it and have it end the turn with twice as much attack and health as on any other turn). Even better games implement some RNG on their cards, Magic for example has cards like Mana Clash, but the percentage of the total card pool is much lower, and it is almost never on very relevant cards (due to the whole future future league testing a set for two years before it's released publically).

All in all, the game itself is okay. But if you play it as strictly free-to-play, you're going to have a highly negative experience, as there is no built-in way for you to not be paired up against someone who has played for over a year and has every card, as opposed to you with just starter cards. And if you play against their AI, you miss out on the most relevant reward for the daily system, which is only given for an online win. All in all, I can't very well advise anyone to get into this game. There are better alternatives for your money and time, but this is just one person's opinion.

This could really be a great game if not for some pretty major issues. I'm not talking technical issues either (allthough it has those), I'm talking major design flaws in the game itself. I've been playing Solforge for some time now, over 200 hours so far, and while this game has the usual balance issues, and other minor technicalities associated with an early release game, the real killer (and why i no longer play) is the rediculous tedium of having to wait...and wait....and wait...and wait some more just to take each of your turns. For some ungodly reason your given 20 min per game each for a total of 40 min, but no time limit on each individual move, so you find yourself quite often que'ing for a game, about 20-40 sec, loading the game screen, about 5-10 sec, THEN STARING AT YOUR MONITOR FOR LITERALLY 15 MINUTES WHILE YOU WAIT FOR YOUR OPONENT TO MAKE THEIR FIRST MOVE!!! But here's the real pinch, the game also allows you to create what seems to be an unlimited amount of games running at the same time. So not only do you get people who enjoy letting the timer run from 20 min down to 3 min before they make their first move, or people who "give up" by simply moving to another game and letting what remains of their 20 min timer run to 0, but you also have to contend with the fact that in 95% of all Solforge games, your opponent will without a doubt have at least 3-4, maybe even 7-8 other games running at the same time, which means while your making moves in 10-20 seconds, your opponent is take 4-5 minutes per move because they're jumping from game to game, and not actually even in your game looking at the same screen you are. This to me is a MAJOR design flaw, and a source of a lot of complaint and debate on the Solforge forums. When you actually get lucky, and happen across another player who seems to only have the one game open like you, and moves are happening in usually less than 30 seconds or so, then the game is actually quite fluid and enjoyable, to the extent I'd even spend real money on it to bolster my collection and "finish off" a few of my decks. But as it stands you spend far to much time doing nothing but staring and waiting. Not cool. In fact its just plain boring and quite frustrating. The Dev's say the official release is on the horizon, and i pray they dont leave the game the way it is, because the "influx of people" they're hope'ing for wont stay for long i can assure you. Which would be a real shame, this could be such a great little game, but for now, ill be off playing something else.